Wine pairing: A delusion? A fraud? Wine expert says it is

Tim Hanni’s learned assertions about wine and food do not match long-held beliefs.

In fact, what Hanni writes in a newly released book — “Why You Like the Wines You Like” — contrasts so much with conventional thinking that it fairly shouts for a response, although up to now it has barely been whispered about.

What Hanni says about pairing that some in the food industry will find outrageous is that it doesn’t exist. To wit:

• “There is no wine and food matching. That’s all a big delusion. All the principles of wine and food matching are a complex set of metaphors that actually have no basis whatsoever. I’m just saying ‘Stop it!’ We all know that Santa Claus doesn’t exist, but we tell our children he does. It’s something called group think. Group think is when you accept something that you know not to be truth, but we do it because everybody does it and we’d look silly if we didn’t. So people do wine and food matching because they think they should.”